PR 4036 
.H8 
Copy 1 



Vol. iil. No. 10. Ten Cents. 



Per Year, One Dollar. 



Uittle 3ournc\>e 
to tbe 1bome0 of 
3famou0 Momcn 
b^ Albert "Ibubbar^ 



Jane Hu6ten 



OCTOBER, 1897 

New York arid Lohdon : <B. p. 

iputnam'6 Sons * * 

New Rochelle, N. Y. The 

Knickerbocker Press -^ 




OLUtle 3ourne?0 

SERIES FOR 1897 

Xlttle Sourness to tbe Ibomes ot 
famous Momcn 

Described by Elbert Hubbard 

No. I.— Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

" 2.— Madame Guyon 

•' 3.~Harriet Martineau 

" 4.— Charlotte Bronte' 

'* 5.— Christina Rossetti 

•* 6.— Rosa Bonheur 

*• 7. — Madame de Stael 

" 8.— Elizabeth Fry 

•* 9. — Mary Lamb 

" 10. — Jane Austen 

" II. — Empress Josephine 

" 12.— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 

The above papers, which will form the 
series of Little Journeys for the year 1897, 
will be issued monthly, beginning in January. 

The numbers will be printed uniform in 
size with the series of 1895 and 1896, but a 
vellum deckel-edge paper will be used, and 
each number will have a portrait as frontis- 
piece. The price of the series of 12 num- 
bers for 1897 will be $1.00 per year ; and for 
single copies 10 cents, postage paid. 

The price for sets or for single copies of 
the series for 1805 and 1896 will remain as 
before, 50 cents for the set and 5 cents per 
copy. 

Entered at the Post Office, New Rochelle, N. Y., 
as second class matter 



Copyright, 1897, by 

G. P. Putnam's sons 

27 * 29 West 23D Street, New York 

24 Bedford Street, Strand, London 

THE Knickerbocker Press, New Rochbllb, N. Y. 



JANE AUSTEN 



323 



-^^h 



3^ 



U? 



Delaford is a nice place I can tell you ; exactly 
what I call a nice old-fashioned place, full of 
comforts, quite shut in with great garden walls 
that are covered with fruit trees and such a mul- 
berry tree in the corner. Then there is a dove- 
cote, some delightful fish ponds, and a very pretty 
canal, and everything, in short, that one could 
wish for; and moreover it's close to the church 
and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike 
road. 

Sense atid Sensibility. 



324 



JANE AUSTEN. 



I. 



IT was at Cambridge, England, I met 
him — a fine intelligent clergyman 
he was, too. " He 's not a 'Varsity 
man," said my new acquaintance, speak- 
ing of Dr. Joseph Parker, the world's 
greatest preacher. "If he were he 
would n't do all these preposterous 
things, you know." 

''He's a little like Henry Irving," I 
ventured apologetically. 

"True, and what absurd mannerisms — 
did you ever see the like ! Yes, one 's 
from Yorkshire and the other from Corn- 
wall, and both are Philistines." 

He laughed at his joke and so did I, 
for I always try to be polite. 
325 



5ane Busten 



So I went my way, and as I strolled it 
came to me that my clerical friend was 
right — a university course would have 
taken all the individuality out of these 
strong men and made of their genius a 
purely neutral decoction. 

And when I thought further and con- 
sidered how much learning has done to 
banish wisdom, it was a satisfaction to 
remember that Shakespeare at Oxford did 
nothing beyond making the acquaintance 
of an inn-keeper's wife. 

It hardly seems possible that a Harvard 
degree would have made a stronger man 
of Abraham Lincoln ; or that Edison, 
whose brain has wrought greater changes 
than that of any other man of the cen- 
tury, was the loser by not being versed 
in physics as taught at Yale. 

The Law of Compensation never rests, 
and the men who are taught too much 
from books are not taught by Deity. 
Most education in the past has failed to 
awaken in its subject a degree of intel- 
lectual consciousness. It is the education 
326 



5ane Bu5ten 



that the Jesuits served out to the Indian. 
It made him peaceable but took all dig- 
nity out of him. From a noble red man 
he descended into a dirty Injun, who 
signed away his heritage for rum. 

The world's plan of education has 
mostly been priestly — we have striven 
to inculcate trust and reverence. We 
have cited authorities and quoted pre- 
cedents and given examples : it was a 
matter of memory : while all the time the 
whole spiritual acreage was left untilled. 

A race educated in this way never ad- 
vances, save as it is jolted out of its no- 
tions by men with either a sublime 
ignorance of, or an indifference to what 
has been done and said. These men are 
always called barbarians by their con- 
temporaries : they are jeered and hooted. 
They supply much mirth by their eccen- 
tricities. After they are dead the world 
sometimes canonizes them and carves on 
their tombs the word *' Savior." 

Do I then plead the cause of ignorance ? 
Well, yes, rather so. A little ignorance 
327 



5ane Busten 



is not a dangerous thing. A man who 
reads too much — who accumulates too 
many facts — gets his mind filled to the 
point of saturation ; matters then crys- 
tallize and his head becomes a solid thing 
that refuses to let anything either in or 
out. In his soul there is no guest-cham- 
ber. His only hope for progress lies in 
another incarnation. 

And so a certain ignorance seems a 
necessary equipment for the doing of a 
great work. To live in a big city and 
know what others are doing and saying ; 
to meet the learned and powerful, and 
hear their sermons and lectures ; to view 
the unending shelves of vast libraries is 
to be discouraged at the start. And thus 
we find that genius is essentially rural — 
a country product. Salons, soirees, 
theatres, concerts, lectures, libraries, 
produce a fine mediocrity that smiles at 
the right time and bows when 't is 
proper, but it is well to bear in mind that 
George Bliot, Elizabeth Barrett, Char- 
lotte Bronte, and Jane Austen were all 
328 



S^ane Hasten 



country girls, with little companion ship, 
nourished on picked-up classics, having 
a healthy ignorance of what the world 
was saying and doing. 



329 



II. 



JANB AUSTEN lived a hundred years 
ago. But when you tramp that 
five miles from Overton, where the 
railroad station is, to Steventon, where 
she was born, it does n't seem like it. 
Rural England does not change much. 
Great fleecy clouds roll lazily across the 
blue, overhead, and the hedgerows are 
full of twittering birds that you hear but 
seldom see ; and the pastures contain 
mild-eyed cows that look at you with 
wide-open eyes over the stone walls, and 
in the towering elm trees that sway their 
branches in the breeze crows hold a 
noisy caucus. And it comes to you that 
the clouds and the blue sky and the 
hedgerows and the birds and the cows 
and the crows are all just as Jane Austen 
knew them — no change. These stone 
330 



5ane Busten 



walls stood here then and so did the low 
slate-roofed barns and the whitewashed 
cottages where the roses clamber over 
the doors. 

I paused in front of one of these snug, 
homely, handsome pretty little cottages 
and looked at the two exact rows of 
flowers that lined the little walk leading 
from gate to cottage door. The pathway 
was made from coal ashes and the flower- 
beds were marked off" by pieces of broken 
crockery set on edge. 'Twas an absent- 
minded, impolite thing to do — to stand 
leaning on a gate and critically exam- 
ine the landscape gardening, evidently 
an overworked woman's gardening, at 
that. 

As I leaned there the door opened and 
a little woman with sleeves rolled up 
appeared. I mumbled an apology, but 
before I could articulate it she held 
out a pair of scissors and said, "Perhaps, 
sir, you 'd like to clip some of the flowers 
— the roses over the door are best ! " 

Three children hung to her skirts, 
331 



5ane Busten 



peeking 'round faces from behind, and 
quite accidentally disclosing a very neat 
ankle. 

I took the scissors and clipped three 
splendid Jacqueminots and said it was a 
beautiful day. She agreed with me and 
added that she was just finishing her 
churning and if I 'd wait a minute until 
the butter came, she 'd give me a drink of 
buttermilk. 

I waited without urging and got the 
buttermilk, and as the children had come 
out from hiding I was minded to give 
them a penny apiece. Two coppers were 
all I could muster, so I gave the two 
boys each a penny and the little girl a 
shilling. The mother protested that she 
had no change and that a bob was too 
much for a little girl like that, but I as- 
sumed a Big-Bonanza air and explained 
that I was from California where the 
smallest change is a dollar. 

" Go thank the gentleman, Jane." 

"That 's right, Jane Austen, come here 
and thank me ! " 

332 



5ane Busten 



" How did you know her came was 
Jane Austen — ^Jane Austen Humphreys ? " 

"I did n't know — I only guessed." 

Then little Mrs. Humphreys ceased 
patting the butter and told me that she 
named her baby girl for Jane Austen, who 
used to live near here a long time ago. 
Jane Austen was oneof the greatest writers 
that ever lived— the Rector said so. 
The Rev. George Austen preached at 
Steventon for years and years, and I 
should go and see the church — the same 
church where he preached and where 
Jane Austen used to go. And anything 
I wanted to know about Jane Austen's 
books the Rector could tell for he was a 
wonderful learned man was the Rector — 
*' Kiss the gentleman, Jane." 

So I kissed Jane Austen's round, rosy 
cheek and stroked the towsled heads of the 
two boys by way of blessing, and started 
for Steventon to interview the Rector 
who was very wise. 

And the clergyman who teaches his 
people the history of their neighborhood, 
333 



3^anc Busten 



and tells them of the excellent men and 
women who once lived thereabouts, is 
both wise and good. And the present 
Rector at Steventon is both— I 'm sure of 
that. 



334 



III. 

IT was a very happy family that lived 
in the Rectory at Steventon from 
1775 to 1 80 1. There were five boys 
and two girls, and the youngest girl's 
name was Jane. Between her and James, 
the oldest boy, lay a period of twelve 
years of three hundred and sixty-five days 
each, not to mention leap years. 

The boys were sent away to be educated, 
and when they came home at holiday 
time they brought presents for the mother 
and the girls and there was great rejoic- 
ing. 

James was sent to Oxford. The girls 
were not sent away to be educated — it 
was thought hardly worth while then to 
educate women, and some folks still hold 
to that belief. When the boys came 
home, they were made to stand by the 
335 



5ane Busten 



door jamb, and a mark was placed on the 
casing, with a date, which showed how 
much they had grown. And they were 
catechized as to their knowledge and 
cross-questioned and their books in- 
spected ; and so we find one of the sisters 
saying, once, that she knew all of the 
things her brothers knew, and besides 
that she knew all the things she knew 
herself. 

There were plenty of books in the li- 
brary and the girls made use of them. 
They would read to their father "because 
his eyesight was bad," but I cannot help 
thinking this a clever ruse on the part of 
the good Rector. 

I do not find that there were any se- 
crets in that household, or that either 
Mr. or Mrs. Austen ever said that child- 
ren should be seen and not heard. It 
was a little republic of letters— all their 
own. Thrown in on themselves, for not 
many of the yeomanry thereabouts could 
read, there was developed a fine spirit of 
comradeship among parents and children, 
336 



3^ane Bu6ten 



brothers and sisters, servants and visitors, 
that is a joy to contemplate. Before the 
days of railroads a "visitor" was more 
of an institution than he is now. He 
stayed longer and was more welcome ; 
and the news he brought from distant 
parts was eagerly asked for. Nowadays 
we know all about everything, almost 
before it happens, for yellow journalism 
is so alert that it discounts futurity. 

In the Austen household had lived and 
died a son of Warren Hastings. The lad 
had so won the love of the Austens that 
they even spoke of him as their own ; 
and this bond also linked them to the 
great outside world of statecraft. The 
things the elders discussed were the 
properties too of the children. 

Then once a year the Bishop came — 
came in knee breeches, hob-nailed shoes, 
and shovel hat, and the little church was 
decked with greens. The Bishop came 
from Paradise, little Jane used to think, 
and once, to be polite, she asked him 
how all the folks were in Heaven. Then 
337 



5ane Bustcn 



the other children giggled and the Bishop 
spilt a whole cup of tea down the front 
of his best coat, and coughed and choked 
until he was very red in the face. 

When Jane was ten years old there 
came to live at the Rectory a daughter of 
Mrs. Austen's sister. She came to them 
direct from P'rance. Her name was 
Madame Fenillade. She was a widow 
and only twenty-two. Once when little 
Jane overheard one of the brothers say 
that Monsieur Fenillade had kissed Ma- 
damoiselle Guillotine, she asked what he 
meant and they would not tell her. 

Now Madame spoke French with grace 
and fluency, and the girls thought it 
queer that there should be two languages 
— English and French — so they picked 
up a few words of French, too, and at the 
table would gravely say "Merci, Papa," 
and " S' il vous plait, Mamma." Then Mr. 
Austen proposed that at table no one 
should speak anything but French. So 
Madame told them what to call the sugar 
and the salt and the bread, and no one 
338 



5anc Busten 



called anything except by its French 
name. In two weeks each of the whole 
dozen persons who sat at that board, as' 
well as the girl who waited on table, had 
a bill-of-fare w^orking capital of French. 
In six months they could converse with 
ease. 

And science with all its ingenuity has 
not yet pointed out a better way for ac- 
quiring a new language, than the plan the 
Austens adopted at Steventon Rectory. 
We call it the "Berlitz Method" now. 

Madame Fenillade's widowhood rested 
lightly upon her, and she became quite 
tke life of the whole household. 

One of the Austen boys fell in love 
with the French widow ; and surely it 
would be a very stupid country boy that 
would n't love a French widow like that ! 

And they were married and lived hap- 
pily ever afterward. 

But before Madame married and moved 
away she taught the girls charades, and 
then little plays, and a theatrical per- 
formance was given in the barn. 
339 



Jane Bu6ten 



Then a play could not be found that 
just suited, so Jane wrote one and Cassan- 
dra helped, and Madame criticised and 
the Rev. Mr. Austen suggested a few 
changes. Then it was all rewritten. 
And this was the first attempt at writing 
for the public by Jane Austen. 



340 



IV. 



JANB AUSTE^N wrote four great nov- 
els. Pride and Prejudice was 
begun when she w^as twenty and fin- 
ished a year later. The old father started 
a course of novel-reading on his own ac- 
count in order to fit his mind to pass 
judgment on his daughter's work. He 
was sure it was good, but feared that love 
had blinded his eyes and he wanted to 
make sure. After six months' compar- 
ison he wrote to a publisher explaining 
that he had the MS. of a great novel that 
would be parted with for a consideration. 
He assured the publisher that the novel 
was as excellent as any Miss Burney, 
Miss Kdgeworth, or anyone else ever 
wrote. 

Now publishers get letters like that 
by every mail, and when Mr. Austen 
341 



5ane Bustcn 



received his reply it was so antarctic in 
sentiment that the MS, was stored away 
in the garret where it lay for just eleven 
years before it found a publisher. But 
in the meantime Miss Austen had writ- 
ten three other novels — not with much 
hope that anyone would publish them, 
but to please her father and the few 
intimate friends who read and sighed 
and smiled in quiet. 

The year she was thirty years of age 
her father died — died with no thought 
that the world would yet endorse his 
own loving estimate of his daughter's 
worth. 

After the father's death financial trou- 
bles came and something had to be done 
to fight off possible hungry wolves. The 
MS. was hunted out, dusted, gone over, 
and submitted to publishers. They 
sniffed at it and sent it back. Finally 
a man was found who was bold enough 
to read. He liked it but would n't admit 
the fact. Yet he decided to print it. 
He did so. The reading world liked it 
342 



5ane Biistcn 



and said so, although not very loudly. 
Slowly the work made head, and small- 
sized lyondon drafts were occasionally 
sent by publishers to Miss Austen with 
apologies because the amounts were not 
larger. 

Now in reference to writing books it 
may not be amiss to explain that no one 
ever said, " Now then, I '11 write a story ! " 
and sitting down at table took up pen 
and dipping it in ink, wrote. Stories 
don't come that way. Stories take pos- 
session of one — incident after incident — 
and you write in order to get rid of 'em 
— with a few other reasons mixed in, 
for motives, like silver, are always found 
mixed. Children play at keeping house : 
and men and women who have loved 
think of the things that might have hap- 
pened, imagine all the things that might 
have happened, and from thinking it all 
over to writing it out is but a step. You 
begin one chapter and write it this fore- 
noon, and do all you may to banish the 
plot the next chapter is all in your head 
343 



5ane Busten 



before sundown. Next morning you 
write chapter number two, to unload 
it, and so the story spins itself out into 
a book. All this if you live in the 
country and have time to think and are 
not broken in upon by too much work 
and worry — save the worry of the ever 
restless mind. Whether the story is 
good or not depends upon what you 
leave out. 

The sculptor produces the beautiful 
statue by chipping away such parts of 
the marble block as are not needed. 

Really happy people do not write 
stories — they accumulate adipose tissue 
and die at the top through fatty degen- 
eration of the cerebrum. A certain dis- 
appointment in life, a dissatisfaction 
with environment, is necessary to stir 
the imagination to a creative point. If 
things are all to your taste you sit back 
and enjoy them. You forget the flight 
of time, the march of the seasons, your 
future life, family, country — all, just as 
Antony did in Egypt. A deadly, languor- 
344 



5atte Busten 



ous satisfaction comes over you. Pain, 
disappointment, unrest, or a joy that 
hurts, are the things that prick the mind 
into activity. 

Jane Austen lived in a little village. 
She felt the narrowness of her life — the 
inability of those beyond her own house- 
hold to match her thoughts and emotions. 
Love came that way — a short heart-rest, a 
being understood, were hers. The gates 
of Paradise swung ajar and she caught a 
glimpse of the glories within, and sighed 
and clasped her hands and bowed her 
head in a prayer of thankfulness. 

When she arose from her knees the 
gates were closed ; the way was dark ; 
she was alone — alone in a little quibbling, 
carping village, where tired folks worked 
and gossiped, ate, drank, slept. Her 
home was pleasant, to be sure, but man 
is a citizen of the world, not of a house. 

Jane Austen began to write — to write 

about these village people. Jane was 

tall, and twenty — not very handsome, but 

better, she was good-looking. She looked 

345 



5ane Busten 



good because she was. She was pious, 
but not too pious. She used to go call- 
ing among the parishioners, visiting the 
sick, the lowly, the troubled. Then 
when Great Folks came down from Ivon- 
don to *'the Hall," she went with the 
Rector to call on them too, for the Rector 
was servant to all — his business was to 
minister : he was a Minister. And the 
Reverend George Austen was a bit proud 
of his youngest daughter. She was just 
as tall as he, and dignified and gentle : 
and the clergyman chuckled quietly to 
himself to see how she was the equal in 
grace and intellect of any Fine Lady from 
Ivondontown. 

And although the good Rector prayed, 
*' From all vanity and pride of spirit, 
good Lord, deliver us," it never occurred 
to him that he was vain of his tall 
daughter Jane, and I 'm glad it did n't. 
There is no more crazy bumble-bee gets 
into a mortal's bonnet than the buzzing 
thought that God is jealous of the affec- 
tion we have for our loved ones. If we 
346 



5ane Busten 



are ever damned, it will be because we 
have too little love for our fellows, not 
too much. 

But, egad ! brother, it 's no small de- 
light to be sixty and a little stooped and 
a trifle rheumatic, and have your own 
blessed daughter, sweet and stately, 
comb your thinning grey locks, help you 
on with your overcoat, find your cane, 
and go trooping with you, hand in hand, 
down the lane on merciful errand bent. 
It 's a temptation to grow old and feign 
sciatica ; and if you could only know 
that, someday, like old King Lear, upon 
your withered cheek would fall Cordelia's 
tears, the thought would be a solace. 

So Jane Austen began to write stories 
about the simple folks she knew. She 
wrote in the family sitting-room at a little 
mahogany desk that she could shut up 
quickly if prying neighbors came in to tell 
their woes and ask questions about all 
those sheets of paper ! And all she wrote 
she read to her father and to her sister 
Cassandra. 

347 



Jane Busten 



And they talked it all over together 
and laughed and cried and joked over it. 
The kind old minister thought it a good 
mental drill for his girls to write and ex- 
press their feelings. The two girls col- 
laborated — that is to say one wrote and 
the other looked on. Neither girl had 
been "educated," except what their 
father taught them. But to be born into 
a bookish family, and inherit the hospi- 
table mind and the receptive heart, is 
better than to be sent to Harvard Annex. 

Preachers, like other folks, sometimes 
assume a virtue when they have it not. 
But George Austen didn't pretend — he 
was. And that 's the better plan, for no 
man can deceive his children — they take 
his exact measurement, whether others 
ever do or not ; and the only way to win 
and hold the love of a child (or a grown- 
up) is to be frank and simple and honest. 
I 've tried both schemes. 

I cannot find that George Austen ever 
claimed he was only a worm of the dust, 
or pretended to be more or less than he 
348 



5ane Busten 



was, or to assume a knowledge that he did 
not possess. He used to say, " My Dears, 
I really do not know. But let 's keep the 
windows open and light may yet come." 

It was a busy family of plain average 
people — not very rich, and not very poor. 
There were difficulties to meet, and 
troubles to share, and joys to divide. 

Jane Austen was born in 1775 ; "Jane 
Eyre " in 1816 — one year before Jane 
Austen died. 

Charlotte Bronte knew all about Jane 
Austen, and her example fired Charlotte's 
ambition. Both were daughters of coun- 
try clergymen. Charlotte lived in the 
north of Kngland on the wild and treeless 
moors, where the searching winds rattled 
the panes and black-faced sheep bleated 
piteously, Jane Austen lived in the rich 
quiet of a prosperous farming country, 
where bees made honey and larks nested. 
The Rev. Patrick Bronte disciplined his 
children : George Austen loved his. In 
Steventon there is no "Black Bull"; 
only a little dehorned inn, kept by a 
349 



5ane 2lu5ten 



woman who hatches canaries, and will 
sell you a warranted singer for five shil- 
lings, with no charge for the cage. At 
Steventon no red-haired Yorkshiremen 
offer to give fight or challenge you to a 
drinking-bout. 

The opposites of things are alike, and 
that is why the world ties Jane Eyre and 
Jane Austen in one bundle. Their meth- 
ods of work were totally different : their 
effects gotten in different ways. Char- 
lotte Bronte fascinates by startling situa- 
tions and highly colored lights that dance 
and glow, leading you on in a mad chase. 
There 's pain, unrest, tragedy in the air. 
The pulse always is rapid and the tem- 
perature high. 

It is not so with Jane Austen. She is 
an artist in her gentleness, and the world 
is to-day recognizing this more and more. 
The stage now works its spells by her 
methods — without rant, cant, or fustian 
— and as the years go by this must be so 
more and more, for mankind's face is 
turned toward truth. 
350 



5ane Busten 



To weave your spell out of common- 
place events and brew a love-potion 
from every-day materials is high art. 
When Kipling takes three average sol- 
diers of the line, ignorant, lying, swear- 
ing, smoking, dog-fighting soldiers, who 
can even run on occasion, and by tell- 
ing of them hold a world in thrall- 
that 's art ! In these soldiers three we 
recognize something very much akin to 
ourselves, for the thing that holds no 
relationship to us does not interest us — 
we cannot leave the personal equation 
out. This fact is made plain in The 
Black Riders, where the devils dancing 
in Tophet look up and espying Steve 
Crane, address him thus : ** Brother ! " 

Jane Austen's characters are all plain, 
every-day folks. The work is always 
quiet. There are no entangling situa- 
tions, no mysteries, no surprises. 

Now, to present a situation, an emo- 
tion, so it will catch and hold the atten- 
tion of others, is largely a knack — you 
practise on the thing until you do it 
351 



5ane Busten 



well. This one thing I do. But the man 
who does this thing is not intrinsically 
any greater than those who appreciate 
it— in fact they are all made of the same 
kind of stuff. Kipling himself is quite a 
commonplace person. He is neither 
handsome nor magnetic. He is plain 
and manly and would fit in anywhere. 
If there was a trunk to be carried up- 
stairs, or an ox to get out of a pit, 
you 'd call on Kipling if he chanced that 
way, and he 'd give you a lift as a matter 
of course, and then go on whistling with 
hands in his pockets. His art is a knack 
practised to a point that gives facility. 

Jane Austen was a commonplace per- 
son. She swept, sewed, worked, and did 
the duty that lay nearest her. She wrote 
because she liked to, and because it 
gave pleasure to others. She wrote as 
well as she could. She had no thought 
of immortality, or that she was writing 
for the ages — no more than Shakespeare 
had. She never anticipated that Southey, 
Coleridge, Ivamb, Guizot, and Macaulay 
352 



5anc Busten 



would hail her as a marvel of insight, 
nor did she suspect that a woman as 
great as George Bliot would declare her 
work flawless. 

But to-day strong men recognize her 
books as rarely excellent, because they 
show the divinity in all things, keep 
close to the ground ; gently inculcate 
the firm belief that simple people are as 
necessary as great ones, that small things 
are not necessarily unimportant, and that 
nothing is really insignificant. It all rings 
true. 

And so I sing the praises of the aver- 
age woman — the woman who does her 
work, who is willing to be unknown, 
who is modest and unaffected, who tries 
to lessen the pains of earth, and to add 
to its happiness. She is the true guard- 
ian angel of mankind ! 

No book published in Jane Austen's 
lifetime bore her name on the title-page ; 
she was never lionized by society ; she 
was never two hundred miles from home ; 
she died when forty-two years of age, and 
353 



5ane Bu6ten 



it was sixty years before a biography was 
attempted or asked for. She sleeps in 
the cathedral at Winchester, and not so 
very long ago a visitor, on asking the 
verger to see her grave, was conducted 
thither, and the verger asked, " Was she 
anybody in particular? so many folks 
ask where she 's buried, you know ! " 

But this is changed now, for when the 
verger took me to her grave and we 
stood by that plain black marble slab, he 
spoke intelligently of her life and work. 
And many visitors now go to the cathe- 
dral only because it is the resting-place 
of Jane Austen, who lived a beautiful, 
helpful life and produced great art, yet 
knew it not. 



354 



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